FireFall: Introduction

A few months ago Firefall wasn't even a blip on my radar. I had somehow ended up on their mailing list, and each new email that came in was deleted by the time I got to the word MMO. In the past year I'd gone through 3 or 4 disappointing MMOs, and I wasn't ready to get bit by another generic "Fight some dragons while you level up and become the ultimate hero!" game. I was so jaded that I somehow completely missed the part where Firefall is set in the future on Earth, is an FPS/TPS, and doesn't have any levels.

Firefall markets itself as "a sci-fi MMO shooter set in a future Earth." And it includes an impressive feature list:

• A Vast Open World - Developed on a 1/10 scale replica of Earth, the game promises to be massive.
• 100% Free-to-Play - Most importantly: "Firefall is Free-2-Play and never Pay-2-Win.
• Tiers, Not Levels - There is no leveling.
• Deep Crafting - Nearly every item in the game is crafted by the players.
• Massive Open World PvP, eSports and Arenas, Dynamic World War, and more.

At first glance, the feature list seems like a dream come true. You see, I'm an old school gamer, I played Ultima Online when it first launched back in 1997, I preferred games like EVE over World of Warcraft, and as I said earlier, I've gotten pretty burnt out from all the swords and sorcery MMOs that have been flooding the market. Firefall sounded like a breath of fresh air. But with such lofty goals, do the developers actually have the resources and knowledge to pull it off?

Let me give you a brief introduction to the team, Red 5 Studios, that's working on Firefall. First and foremost is Mark Kern, CEO and Chief Creative Officer for the company. That name should sound familiar to you if you've ever heard of a little game called World of Warcraft. Mark was the Team Lead for WoW (and worked on several other Blizzard titles before that) meaning he was essentially the 2nd person in charge of developing the game right behind the Executive Producer. Up next is Scott Youngblood, the lead designer for Starsiege Tribes and Tribes 2, the game that introduced FPS players to jump jets. With just these 2 developers we have world renowned talent related to MMOs and FPS games, now if only they had someone to help with world building and story telling. Oh, did I forget to mention that Orson Scott Card is also working on the game? He wrote a little book you may have heard of called Ender's Game as well as dozens of other scifi books and has quite a large stack of awards in his den.

Now that you're all caught up, you're probably wondering how you've gotten through 3 paragraphs of text without any discussion of the game itself. Ok fine. Let's talk about the game.

Firefall is an incredibly fun game. The controls are perfect for an FPS if you've ever played some Quake Arena or Tribes. New players may have some difficulty getting used to the idea of using jetpacks to fly around the world, but it's a skill you'll pick up quickly. This single feature, I believe, sets this game apart from other MMOFPS games. Opening up the third axis, the vertical one, allows for a huge amount of additional tactics and skills to come into play. No longer are you simply running through a flat field dodging in between areas of cover (although those do still exist), now you're flying over the battlefield and raining death down on those unfortunate enough to not be airborne like you. I feel that at this point I can't do the game further justice with words alone, have a look at my video review below.

As I said in the video, leave me a comment here or on YouTube if you'd like a beta code. Just a quick sentence or two explaining why you want to play, and what part of the game sounds most exciting to you. Codes are first-come, first-served, and aren't unlimited, so don't hesitate.